PurePVR

TV advertising revenue has been more and more in the forefront of the PVR / DVR market as of late. Most of the big broadcasting corporations are complaining left and right that the ‘TV Revolution’ is nothing more than viewers skipping their advertisements. They don’t seem to care whether users watch more TV or even if they enjoy their shows more with the help of time shifting. What they care about is their bottom line advertising revenues.

Some advertisers (such as GE & Coke) have started to try and crack the market, and I applaud them for trying to break new ground. Broadcasting networks have started using product placements as a way to generate advertising revenue without having to risk people fast forwarding the show. Even that I can live with assuming that it doesn’t get in the way of the show. But still some corporations are complaining.
So what’s the point of this rant? Well, Phil Swann was on Fox News recently and he brought up another possible strategy that would get users to hold off on the fast forward button. What’s this new revolutionary strategy? More live events. Plain and simple. Upon reading his blog post about it I thought that it was probably a great strategy. Suppose you could organize a large enough event that nobody would want to miss. Everyone would start watching it as soon as they could and if they start watching it on time, that means no time shifting, and no time shifting means no skipped commercials. Of course we’ll have to see if this takes off, but how many more options do these corporations need before they finally move forward and embrace the technology?

Technorati Tags: PVR, DVR, Marketing, Swanni